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Recent News - General

Surprising everyone, this month's 'February update for branch 1709' from Microsoft includes new Windows Hello code that completely fixes the fingerprint recognition issues that the Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro has had since launch.

People think of our OS being dead. Not quite. We're still looking at (up to) two years of support in terms of monthly patches and fixes for Windows 10 Mobile. And build 15254.248 (from .158) is fresh out today, so go grab it for all phones currently on the 'Fall Creators Update'.

With the switch/focus at Microsoft away from Windows 10 Mobile 'Insiders' test builds, using these rings to try out advance versions of core UWP applications is also now outdated. Or so evidence from the Microsoft Store suggests.

As widely reported around the web today, one of the Microsoft Insiders programme team has confirmed what many people suspected would happen as we got close to the formal release of 'Redstone 4' (for which there is no mobile equivalent under any name) - no more development Insiders builds are planned for Mobile. Here's what this means...

You'll remember my unofficial way to post longer tweets in Tweetium last week? Well, this is now redundant as Tweetium UWP now supports 280 character tweets officially, in an update released just now. Notably, the official Twitter UWP client is still limited to 140 characters, so Tweetium is the way to go.

After a gap of six weeks, it's my latest update for AAWP's directories of general applications (8 new entries, 2 removed), media, imaging and reading apps (3 new entries), and games (12 new entries). Your guide to the best of Microsoft's on-phone Store, every item has been reviewed - or recommended by readers here.

People think of our OS being dead. Not quite. We're still looking at (up to) just over two years of support in terms of monthly patches and fixes for Windows 10 Mobile. And build 15254.124 is fresh out today, so go grab it. In other news, the Fast ring on the Insiders finally gets a new build, on the way to a 'Redstone 4'-compatible branch in 2018.

First seen at IFA back in August, the Wileyfox Pro has now surfaced, shipping in a couple of weeks, for £189 inc VAT. It's fairly low end, but Wileyfox clearly sees a security-conscious market in the enterprise world and I'll bet that price is negotiable in bulk, so think £120 each, ex-VAT, to companies?

The headline above is more of a confirmation than a revelation, of course, but it's still worth stating, if only to work out the phones that are still going to be supported. The sources here are independent tweets from Jason Howard and Brandon Le Blanc, senior managers on the Windows Insider programme. Below, I dig deep into timescales and support windows to find out what this means for some classic Lumias.